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Tesla is scheduled to report earnings tomorrow (Jan. 28). However the electrical carmaker’s shareholders are much less considering quarterly margins than in listening to Elon Musk discuss every part else. On Say.com, a third-party platform Tesla makes use of to gather questions for its earnings calls, the most up-voted submissions from each retail and institutional buyers aren’t about car gross sales; they’re about robotaxis, humanoid robots and SpaceX.
Listed below are the highest investor questions, and why they matter.
“You as soon as stated: Loyalty deserves loyalty. Will long-term Tesla shareholders nonetheless be prioritized if SpaceX does an IPO?”
Musk runs six corporations, however Tesla is the one one which’s publicly traded. Consequently, its earnings calls have develop into the one venue the place buyers and Wall Avenue analysts can immediately ask Musk about his different privately-held ventures. SpaceX has been prime of thoughts for a lot of Musk observers due to its extremely anticipated blockbuster IPO. The rocket and satellite tv for pc firm is reportedly taking steps to go public as quickly as this yr, concentrating on a valuation of $1.5 trillion—practically double its present valuation of $800 billion.
That may immediately make SpaceX Musk’s most respected firm. Tesla, for now, stays the most important Musk-led agency with a $1.36 trillion market cap, however its momentum is fading as EV gross sales sluggish and new merchandise wrestle to scale. In the meantime, SpaceX is prospering out of the highlight, pulling in 11-figure annual income from authorities contracts and shopper Starlink subscriptions. Musk’s stake there now represents greater than half of his web value.
If SpaceX goes public, Musk would immediately have a second set of public shareholders to reply to—together with earnings calls, regulatory scrutiny and much more media obligations. Tesla buyers already bristled final yr when Musk took on one other high-profile time sink as head of DOGE, a political facet venture that distracted from the carmaker.
“When is FSD going to be 100% unsupervised?” and “What’s the present bottleneck to elevated Robotaxi deployment & private use of unsupervised FSD? The protection/efficiency of the newest fashions or folks to watch robotaxis in-car or remotely? Or one thing else?”
With regards to Tesla itself, buyers are longing for updates on FSD and Robotaxi. FSD, quick for “Full Self-Driving,” is Tesla’s driver-assistance software program, although the title is deceptive: it nonetheless requires a human driver to stay alert and able to intervene always. Musk has been promising true autonomy for greater than a decade, nevertheless it’s not fairly there but. Regulators classify FSD as Degree 2 autonomy, which means the human continues to be in cost. Totally unsupervised driving could be Degree 5.
To date, the largest step Tesla has taken towards that imaginative and prescient is Robotaxi, its autonomous ride-hailing service now working in Austin. The corporate launched it in June 2025, utilizing modified Mannequin Y autos outfitted with FSD. Initially, human security screens sat within the passenger seat. As of January, a small variety of autos with out supervisors have joined the fleet, marking a serious milestone. Enlargement to extra cities hinges on regulatory approval.
With international EV demand leveling off, the success or failure of Robotaxi performs a big position in Tesla’s future.
“Relating to Optimus, might you share the present variety of items deployed in Tesla factories and actively performing manufacturing duties? What particular roles or operations are they dealing with, and the way has their integration impacted manufacturing unit effectivity or output?”
One other key product that can decide Tesla’s destiny is Optimus, a humanoid robotic designed to take over duties which might be boring or unsafe—from family chores to manufacturing unit work. Naturally, Tesla’s EV factories could be an ideal proving floor for these robots. The corporate plans to start coaching Optimus at its Austin Gigafactory in early 2026, instructing robots to carry out human manufacturing unit duties.
Tesla introduced the Optimus venture in 2021 and unveiled a prototype in 2022. It’s powered by Tesla’s in-house machine studying and A.I. know-how. Musk has described the venture as one in every of Tesla’s most essential long-term endeavors, even saying it might finally be extra important than the corporate’s car enterprise.
In keeping with Musk, preliminary manufacturing of Optimus is predicted later this yr, however at an “agonizingly sluggish” tempo because of the complexity of humanoid robotics. Musk has focused promoting Optimus to the general public as quickly as subsequent yr. However given Musk’s monitor report of sticking to formidable timelines, buyers might wish to take that with a grain of salt.
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